1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure generally relates to the field of illumination, and more particularly, to a replacement light assembly for hand-held medical diagnostic instruments, such as those used in physicians' offices, healthcare facilities, or other medical environments.
2. Description of Related Art
Many hand-held medical diagnostic instruments such as otoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, and the like utilize miniature incandescent lamps, such as halogen or xenon lamps, as illumination sources. These lamps typically include a miniature filament, and are housed within the handle or the head of the instrument. The instruments may utilize one or more fiber optic bundles, lenses, mirrors, and/or other optical components to transmit light and/or other radiation from the lamp to an opening of the diagnostic instrument, thereby illuminating a medical target, such as a portion of the patient's anatomy, for examination.
Recently, however, there has been considerable interest in the field of light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) as a potential substitute for such incandescent lamps. Such LEDs typically provide better illumination capabilities than the incandescent lamps discussed above, and are therefore desired for use in a variety of medical applications and other applications. Such LEDs also typically exhibit longer life, greater resistance to shock and/or impact, cooler operating temperatures, and other more desirable operating characteristics than miniature incandescent lamps. Moreover, some LEDs, such as color LEDs, may provide additional benefits over incandescent lamps such as spectral tuning, spectrally-specific illumination, and the like.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to replace the incandescent bulbs utilized in an existing hand-held diagnostic instrument with LEDs as illumination sources. There are, however, a number of significant optical, mechanical, thermal, and/or other differences between LEDs and incandescent lamps which must be considered when replacing such lamps with LEDs in known medical diagnostic instruments. For example, incandescent lamps are typically larger than LEDs, and emit light and other radiation having different optical characteristics than light emitted by LEDs. Thus, there is a need to develop a replacement light assembly which can be mechanically, optically, and electrically incorporated into, for example, existing hand-held medical diagnostic instruments without making mechanical, optical, and/or other modifications to these diagnostic instruments.
Embodiments of the present disclosure satisfy the needs noted above.